Yes, the debt went up. Tax revenues collapsed in this period, remember.
But Hoover was trying to balance the budget. He saw it as a goal, an end to itself that would reassure credit markets and do a bunch of good. FDR saw stimulating demand as more important in the short term. That's the difference between them. Hoover was raising taxes to try and balance the budget, and only increased government spending very slightly considering he had 25% unemployment. FDR threw it all to the wind for a few years and massively increased deficits as a deliberate policy.
Interesting stuff. It does seem to turn out that Hoover pushed less for balanced budgets than I thought, although there are lots of statements attributed to him around 1932 trying to balance the budget, the tax hikes, etc.
But I thought the difference was more clear-cut than that as far as their actions.
Still, I find it hard to justify the statement that "they had the same view in regards to counter-cyclical spending and balanced budgets" -- FDR championed crazy deficits to stimulate the economy for a decade, Hoover seems to have been trying to move towards a balanced budget after a brief round of stimulus.
According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Hoover#1932_campaign), there are statements attributed to FDR accusing Hoover of reckless spending and criticizing him for spending too much and putting too many people on the dole. There are a lot of statements attributed to Bush about humble foreign policy, limited government and deregulation, and statements attributed to Obama about how forcing people to buy insurance is a bad thing.
In general, I assume that a politicians views agree with what he does rather than the lies he tells to get elected.
Hoover signed into law drastic tax increases, e.g. Revenue Act of 1932.
He did attempt some spending programs near the end of his presidency which was also at a point where the depression was already around the point of its most extreme GDP contraction.
You could argue that was FDR did in terms of spending and bank reforms was similar to what Hoover started near the end of his presidency but orders of magnitude larger. In contrast debt/GDP actually remained neutral during the New Deal due to concurrent GDP expansion.
Hoover, a one-time business whiz and a would-be all-purpose social problem-solver in the Lee Iacocca mold, was a bowling ball looking for pins to scatter. He was a government activist fixated on the idea of running the country as an energetic CEO might run a giant corporation. It was Hoover, not Roosevelt, who initiated the practice of piling up big deficits to support huge public-works projects. After declining or holding steady through most of the 1920s, federal spending soared between 1929 and 1932 -- increasing by more than 50%, the biggest increase in federal spending ever recorded during peacetime.
It's deliberately misleading. "between 1929 and 1932" is a misleading way of saying "in 1932". Almost all of the deficit increase and public works spending occurred in 1932 (due to a single bill: the Emergency Relief and Construction Act) near the end of Hoover's presidency, but by saying "between 1929 and 1932" it makes it sound like it was a consistent policy throughout the downturn. In reality by that time in 1932 the depression was already near its worst lows and Hoover had tried keeping the budget balanced prior to that and only had a few months left in office.
But Hoover was trying to balance the budget. He saw it as a goal, an end to itself that would reassure credit markets and do a bunch of good. FDR saw stimulating demand as more important in the short term. That's the difference between them. Hoover was raising taxes to try and balance the budget, and only increased government spending very slightly considering he had 25% unemployment. FDR threw it all to the wind for a few years and massively increased deficits as a deliberate policy.